


Priceless

by gumibea



Category: Produce 101 (TV), Produce X 101 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Fluff and Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 08:38:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19808680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gumibea/pseuds/gumibea
Summary: Hangyul and his willingness to pay the price of what he sets his heart on.





	Priceless

Everything in life has its price. That’s a universal truth and Hangyul knows it well. A simple instance of this rule is that if he doesn’t want to wash dishes when it’s his turn, he has to pay Dohyon, his younger brother, 5000₩ out of his own pocket and the boy would happily pull a little performance in front of their parents, saying “I don’t have any homework today. Let me help you with the dishes, hyung.”

 _Brat._ Hangyul thinks.

Another prime case is that if he wants to go the hottest bar in Hongdae on a Wednesday night then the actual price he has to pay later is his will to wake up at 6:30 the next day to get ready for morning classes and waves of nausea adding to his suffering while he’s wrapping himself in the blanket.

A loud bang on his door added another layer on the aching pain in his skull that had already been ebbing and flowing like angry tides at the sea. Dohyun burst in, yelling if he didn’t get up, their mom will come upstairs with an ice bucket.

 _Kill me._ Hangyul groaned. If only he hadn’t missed the deadline for the college dorm application, he would be able to skip a few classes when he is unable to leave his bed and there’s no way his mom would know. But he’s only got his incompetent memory to blame; that’s why he’s still living with his family until he saves up enough from his part-time job to put down a deposit for a tiny apartment near his college.

“You have to knock, Dohyon. Knock.” Hangyul threw his hands up, desperately trying to get the concept of knocking before entering engraved in his brother’s little mind.

“Sure, hyung.” The boy nodded eagerly. “I’ll knock next time. By the way, I ate the omelette mom made for, er, you and me. Sorry. Gotta go.”

The giant kid slammed the door shut as quickly and loudly as how he opened it, leaving Hangyul drowning in misery.

*

Hangyul got out of the bed at the speed of a snail, then dragged his whole body into the bathroom to splash cold water on his face and instantly wished he could wash his brain free of the leftover toxins too. The entire trip from his house to the station then heading towards the college was kind of a haze, Hangyul tried to recall the name of the drink Kookheon offered him last night but not until he set his foot inside the classroom, did he successfully remember what it called.

_The Lash._

Just like how precipitate and aggressive it sounds, one flaming shot and Hangyul deadly forgot what his name is when an orange-haired girl swayed her way over with the most basic pick-up line. He made a mental note of considering carefully what Kookheon tells him to try at the bar next time.

“Hey there,” Sihoon drummed on the desk, gesturing for Hangyul to sit down next to him. “You look like shit.”

“I’m not feeling well.” Hangyul admitted.

“Did you finish your report?”

“What report?”

“The reflective report on modernism in Korean Literature.” Sihoon sighed. “It’s due today but I’ll assume whatever you got into your system last night probably wiped out your memory about that.”

“Where’s Yohan?” Hangyul avoided his friend’s speculation. He did write about one page and a half or so at 4 A.M a few days ago when the Internet at his home was down, then left it somewhere in one of those “New Folder” on his laptop so he wouldn't try to defend himself.

“What the hell did you two drink last night? He didn’t respond when I slapped his face to wake him up.”

“And you left him at the dorm?”

“He’s still breathing.” Sihoon replied in his usual laid-back manner. Afterwards, he added, “Looking at him this morning made me feel better about my stomach condition.”

Unlike everyone in their circle of friends, Sihoon doesn’t drink because he simply can’t. Hangyul threw him a look, doubting if his friend was being sarcastic. So, Yohan decided to skip the class and Hangyul can bet all the money in his precious saving account that if he forgot about the deadline then Yohan is no better than him.

Hangyul slept through the whole period and when Sihoon pinched his arm to get him up, the classroom was almost empty. His stomach was growling, he wanted nothing but going to the cafeteria to get some steamed buns. However, Sihoon stopped in front of the teaching assistant’s desk to ask about a part of the lecture that Hangyul had no idea what it was.

Something seemed odd about the teaching assistant, then Hangyul realized the person talking to Sihoon at the moment wasn’t the female assistant who looks like she hates her job with every fiber of her being, the one who yelled at Hangyul when he hesitantly asked if he could get extra time to hand in the homework he missed as he had been hospitalized with food poisoning the week before. This is a guy with jet black hair and he wears a pair of vintage inspired, semi-rimless round glasses that complete his narrow cheekbones and rather angular jawline, Hangyul quietly observed.

“Do you have any questions?”

Hangyul startled when the teaching assistant directed his question at him. It was clear as day that the guy was mistaking Hangyul staring at him as another student was expecting to get some help, not a giant weirdo making sheep’s eyes at his him.

 _Absolutely not._ Hangyul can’t be that conspicuous with his gaze. It’s just his mind is still groggy from last night hangover so it couldn’t control his eyes.

“No,” Hangyul shifted his balance slightly; even Sihoon was looking at him now, “Thank you.”

“Who was that?” Hangyul asked as soon as Sihoon and him were out of the class.

“Ms. Kim resigned. That’s Mr. Cho Seungyoun. He’s a lot more friendly than Ms. Kim and he helps everyone.”

_Indeed._

Hangyul spent the rest of the day in library and barely reached the word limit for his report. Then, he poured his heart into a sentimental yet incredibly formal email to the new teaching assistant, explaining a family emergency occurred was the reason why he submitted the report five hours late after the deadline. He was lying through his teeth but Sihoon said good things about Seungyoun, so he hoped his report would still be classed as a valid attempt. The response from the teaching assistant was fair; he said Hangyul’s work would receive a mark capped at the minimum pass mark and there will be no exception for another late submission.

Hangyul closed his laptop in satisfaction and checked his phone. Kookheon sent a message saying it’s Happy Thursday at the bar, buy one get one on all drinks including featured cocktail menu but Hangyul declined his invitation. Having a friend who works at the bar brings some benefits but he still has to manage himself. He could use some time tonight to actually study from the notes he borrowed from Sihoon.

*

On Monday, Hangyul spotted Seungyoun in the teacher’s lounge when he was looking for the Student Support Adviser. The teaching assistant dyed his hair to a shimmering shade of desert taupe and wasn’t wearing his glasses, which gave Hangyul a look at how straight his nose bridge is.

When their eyes met, Hangyul turned away immediately like a cat getting caught red-pawed.

“Lee Hangyul, right?”

“Yes.”

“About your report,” Seungyoun rested his chin on his hand, his voice is a bit nasal but surprisingly soothing. “If you had analyzed deeper into the part which you mentioned the relative successes of the March First Movement put an emerged emphasis on the themes of individuality and self-discovery, it could have been much better.”

“I failed?” Hangyul’s face unconsciously changed to a look of disappointment and Seungyoun let out a muttered laugh.

“No, you didn’t. Just saying, if you’re interested in the time between 1919 and 1936, you should read some of Kim Dongin’s early works. They will give you a better understanding about his literacy war with Yi Kwangsoo.” Seungyoun made a vague gesture with his free hand, then continued, “Art for art’s sake versus literature must be didactic, you know?”

Hangyul nodded reluctantly. He watched Seungyoun’s lips move; the top lip is thinner, but not too thin, and it forms a natural cupid’s bow while the bottom is moderately more plumped. When he smiles softly, it’s like sunshine casts its color up to his face and slight dimples appear on his cheeks.

_Beautiful._

Hangyul made a promise with himself to not miss any deadline of Korean Literature anymore.

*

Dohyon didn’t bother to look up from his phone when Hangyul entered his room to check if his brother had taken his laptop charger again; the kid was too busy blasting his opponent with a continuous flow of haymakers in the trendiest boxing game for iOS while munching on a bar of chocolate. Hangyul noticed next to where his brother was sitting was an opened gift box that looks like it was nicely wrapped before his brother teared out the cover.

“Where did you get that?” Hangyul pointed at the box.

“In my desk drawer at school.” Dohyon still didn’t advert his eyes from the screen. Hangyul was tempted to snatch the phone out of his hands then something popped in his head when he looked at the calendar on the wall.

“Valentine’s Day gift?”

“I guess so.”

“Dohyon,” Hangyul stressed on the last syllable. “You go to an all-boys school.”

“It’s anonymous.” His brother finally looked up. A frown appeared between his eyebrows. The boy chewed carefully on the last bit of the chocolate bar before replying. “It’s free chocolate. It’s under my desk. I should take it.”

There are too many holes in his brother’s logic and Hangyul wanted to argue but he decided not to. His brother is a sixteen-year old boy with a simple mind while he is his elder brother who hasn’t figured out his sexuality yet; hence, the best he could do in this situation is to let it slide then perhaps come back five years later.

That night, Hangyul had a dream in which he clasped his hands on either side of Seungyoun’s face, then he took off Seungyoun’s glasses and their lips interlocked like matching puzzle pieces in a tender kiss.

*

Hangyul went to work early.

He unlocked the front door and flipped the sign in the window from closed to open, then idly started the cash register program. Wooseok, the owner of the bookstore stepped in ten minutes later, waving his hand as a way of saying “Good morning!”.

Hangyul isn’t a book lover but he reads regularly due to the fact that’s what his major requires. He doesn’t get paid for reading books, though. The bookstore was previously owned by Wooseok’s grandmother and passed on to him. Wooseok is a senior student who studies psychology so he had very little time to none during the week to manage the store properly. That’s why he needs someone to do almost everything around the store, from keeping everything in their place to doing the paperwork and recommending books for people who walk in with no certain names of books in their minds. And Hangyul meets those requirements; he’s neat and there have been several customers buying from the store frequently thanks to his recommendation. However, the reason why a small bookstore like this is still standing in this day and age of online shopping and digital downloads is their profit comes mostly through the rare and first edition books, which is the result of how Wooseok’s grandmother successfully built a system of collecting and trading way back in the late 80s.

Technically speaking, Hangyul should be busy handling the business but it was Tuesday, the quietest day during the week. Wooseok came to sign some papers and like he said, the neighbor next to his house is renovating their home so he needed a noiseless place to write his thesis proposal.

A few people come and go throughout the morning: A high school student purchased some TOEIC books, a young woman in a grey suit came by to pick up her boss’s order from last week. Nothing was out of ordinary. Around half past nine, Wooseok’s boyfriend walked in and Hangyul watched the owner look up from his laptop, eyes brightened with joy.

As he handed Wooseok a large-sized cup of coffee, the guy gave him a peck on his cheek. Such a typical little thing two people in love do every day but Hangyul thought it was adorable. Needless to say, he wants someone to bring him coffee in the middle of a Tuesday morning, kiss him playfully and ask how his day has been too. Preferably someone who is a little taller than him and has desert taupe hair.

Hangyul waited until Wooseok’s boyfriend bid him goodbye and left the store to ask a question that has been bothering him greatly.

“Hyung, can I ask, like, I mean-” Hangyul struggled to put his tangled thoughts into a sentence.

“Are you having a stroke?” Wooseok laughed out loud.

“No!” Hangyul objected. “I mean, how does someone know he’s gay?”

“Go to aisle six, there’s an ancient book about how to sexually identify yourself. I think my grandmother had purposely left it for me before she went to Heaven.” Wooseok folded his arms across his chest, looking serious.

“Are you kidding me, hyung?”

“Yes.” Wooseok pat his shoulder lightly. “I don’t know, man. It wasn’t a big epiphany-like moment for me. I knew and I didn’t fight against who I am. But why? Did something,” the older paused, scanning his only employee from head to toe, “or someone sparkle your gay awakening?”

Hangyul proceeded to tell Wooseok about Dohyon and how his brother thinks receiving free chocolate is more important than finding out which boy gave it to him, omitting the part about his crush on the Korean Literature teaching assistant.

“Leave it.” Wooseok turned his attention back to his proposal. “High school kids these days don’t have time for self-realization. Your brother probably likes chocolate a bit too much.”

“I don’t think psychology suits you, hyung. Really.” Hangyul blurted out, unapologetically.

“Well, if I can’t become a psychiatrist, I still have this store to fall back on, don’t I?”

Hangyul didn’t think he could argue with that reasoning.

*

Wooseok gave Hangyul a surprise bonus and a paperback poetry book named “Crush” by an author he had never heard of, Richard Siken. Hangyul was never a fan of poetry. The foreword of the book raised many questions and Hangyul figured out why Wooseok gave him this poetry collection when he got to the part where the editor wrote about the title: “Crush […] as a noun, “extreme pressure”. Out of this cauldron of destruction, its informal meaning: infatuation, the sweet fixation of girl on boy. In Siken, boy on boy.”

_Boy on boy._

Hangyul decided to tell Wooseok he hates him next time they meet.

Thankfully, the book isn’t a gay erotic poetry. The first poem in the book is “Scheherazade”(*) and Hangyul didn’t actually understand the poem the first time he read it, or the next time, or the tenth time he read it over the following two days.

One thing he likes about the poem is how Siken places long lines that run into the next line and mix them with short lines which are often intentionally flushed to the right margin. Even before starting to read, he could sense the chaos imprinted in each word.

_Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake_

_and dress them in warm clothes again._

It was the thirteenth time when Hangyul re-read the poem all over again. Sihoon said he would come and they can study for the upcoming exam but a stomach flu stopped him from going out of the dorm; thus, Hangyul was all by himself in a quieter corner of the library.

His heart dropped to his feet and his body vibrated with anxiety when a familiar face appeared in front of him. Seungyoun casually sat down and placed a few books on the empty desk, greeting Hangyul with a warm smile.

“What are you reading?” Seungyoun titled his head to his left side, trying to catch the title of the book. “Oh. Richard Siken.”

Hangyul felt his face was burning. The way Seungyoun said the name of the poet, it sounded like he wasn’t unfamiliar with the name and the book itself. From what Hangyul gathered on the Internet, Siken writes about panic without saying “panic” but Hangyul is no poet; he was terrified.

He was terrified of Seungyoun gauging the fact that he’s a potential confused gay who has a gay themed poem stuck in his brain for days and dreams about the man sitting in front of him on Valentine’s Day.

“It never occurred to me you will be the type that likes poetry. On top of that, Richard Siken.” Seungyoun was still grinning yet Hangyul couldn’t even force a smile.

“You must have read “Scheherazade” a lot, haven’t you?” The teaching assistant pointed at a curl at the top edge of the page Hangyul was reading. 

“I,” Hangyul tried not to sound like a broken record. “I don’t really get the meaning behind the poem. The words are beautiful and elegant, though.”

“My suggestion is you should re-familiarize yourself with the surrounding plot of “One Thousand and One Nights”. Scheherazade is the name of narrator in the tale and it plays an essential role of setting the tone of redemption, elongation, intimacy, and well, caution in the poem.”

Hangyul could listen to Seungyoun going on an unstoppable track about the poem he didn’t fully grasp, about the hint of nostalgia in the way the poet compares love to a song on a policeman’s radio and the brutal connotation blended into the context of the poem all day. 

Until the man hit him with a simple question.

“How did you find this book?”

Obviously, Hangyul couldn’t say something along the line of “My boss who is probably the same age as you gave me this because in his wicked mind firmly stood a belief that I’m going to have the big, important gay awakening moment of my life very soon.” He settled with a safe answer. “I found it in the bookstore I’m working at.”

After that, Hangyul made an excuse to leave the library and headed to where he could yell in the face of his boss.

*

“I hate you.” Hangyul said without the honorific. Wooseok laughed heartily and Hangyul wanted to quit his job right on the spot.

“Because?”

“The poetry. The damn poetry. I’m okay. I don’t need an overwhelming and frantically depressing poetry written by a man as a response to the death of his boyfriend in the 90s to tell me that I’m gay and I’m probably in love with–” Hangyul’s rant was cut off by the melodious tinkling of the wind chime at the front door, signaling a customer had just walked in.

The customer wore a pair of semi-rimless round glasses and an orange beanie that matches the bleached color of his jacket.

“Who? With who?” Wooseok slammed his fist on the wooden desk, ignoring the existence of the new customer.

“Hey.” the customer waved at Hangyul. The younger paralyzed behind the counter.

_Cho Seungyoun._

_Or shall he address, according to Wooseok’s dictionary, the fount of his latent sexual self-realization?_

“You told me about where you work, remember?” Seungyoun beamed and for a moment, Hangyul thought the teaching assistant was an angel who graced the bookstore with his presence.

“Is there anything I can help you with today, Seungyoun-ssi?” Hangyul tried to remain professional and indifferent and not act like he was talking to the man of his dream.

“We aren’t in class.” Seungyoun put his hands in his jeans pocket and walked up to the counter. “You can call me hyung. I’m buying some Math books for my cousin.”

“Reference books are in aisle three.” Hangyul trailed off uncertainly and Seungyoun raised an inquisitive brow at him. “ _Hyung_.”

Wooseok waited till Seungyoun went out of his earshot to face Hangyul.

“Interesting.”

“No.”

“He seems to be into you.”

“He saw me reading the book you gave me.” Hangyul lowered his voice to resemble the sound of a mosquito buzzing.

“Did he praise you for having a good taste in poetry?” Wooseok winked.

“You’re so evil! Does Jinhyuk hyung know who you really are?”

“Of course, he knows.” Wooseok shrugged. “Now, your future boyfriend is coming. Act natural.”

“Go to hell.” Hangyul mumbled under his breath.

“I think I’ll take these ones.” Seungyoun said, passing Hangyul a pile of books.

“Alright.” Hangyul started processing the transaction as Seungyoun pulled out his wallet. Three high school Algebra books, a Japanese thriller novel by Miyuki Miyabe, and a book named “The Real Modern: Literary Modernism and the Crisis of Representation in Colonial Korea”.

Hangyul put everything into a paper bag and handed it over to Seungyoun. The man took out the last book and placed it on the desk, pushed it towards the younger.

“This one is for you. I’ve seen your grade; you have to put all in for your mid-term assignment,” Seungyoun tapped on the cover of the book. “The author has a lot to offer about the relationships between language, colonial subjugation, and modernist aesthetics. Very informative.”

“That’s so nice of you, hyung.” Hangyul glanced down to the hardback in his hands. “You always help everyone.”

“You don't get it, do you?" Seungyoun looked right into Hangyul’s eyes, his tone and words were like low rolls of thunder, sending chills through the younger’s body. "I don’t go around buying books for each and every student in my class.” 

A thousand thoughts were running around like hyperventilating rabbits in Hangyul’s head but none of them seems to be practical to assist him in this situation. Eventually, he went with the one thousand and one.

“Hyung, could you help me with my assignment?”

“I could,” Seungyoun hasn’t dragged his gaze away. “If you ever need me to.”

“I’ll meet you tomorrow afternoon at the café next to the campus. 3 P.M. Is that okay with you?”

Hangyul felt like his chest could explode at any minute.

“Sure.” Seungyoun chuckled. “See you tomorrow.”

Before his shift ended, Hangyul told Wooseok he’s going to take a day off tomorrow and he doesn’t care whether the older has time to run his business for the whole day. Wooseok would never fire him and he wouldn’t even consider his daily wage a price he has to pay for an afternoon studying with Seungyoun.

It’s _priceless_.

**Author's Note:**

> (*) the poem “Scheherazade” and a short analysis are ["here"](http://noa-betweenthelines.blogspot.com/2017/02/scheherazade-by-richard-siken.html)  
> finally, i managed to churn out a fun piece of seunggyul (read: i'm not really sure if this is actually fun).  
> this was written at 3 a.m bc i had accidentally drunk too much redbull during the day. i couldn't sleep so i wrote. feel free to correct any typos, i'll owe you my life.


End file.
